Flynn licked his thumb and then cocked it over his shoulder. “He’s saying hello to the setup man.”
“Huh.” Frowning, Jeth headed across the cargo bay and down the ramp. The bright glow of genuine sunshine made his eyes ache. He hadn’t been planetside in a long time, and the shock of natural sunlight pierced his forehead. He squinted against it, finally making out Danforth and another man standing beside a Wellforth delivery truck. Like Shady, both Danforth and the setup man wore khaki uniforms.
Oppressive heat enveloped Jeth like a fog as he crossed the wet, squishy ground toward them. The trees in the distance drooped beneath the weight of vines and overgrowth.
“Oh, there you are, Jeth,” Danforth said. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you, but the truck arrived ahead of schedule.”
“Better early than late,” the setup man said. He had a plain, uninteresting face aside from a bulbous nose that looked like some knobby outgrowth of tree bark rather than human flesh.
“This is Jeth Seagrave,” said Danforth. “He’s in charge.”
“So I’ve heard.” The man took in Jeth’s appearance with a disbelieving expression.
Jeth didn’t let it bother him. It wasn’t the first time an adult had dismissed him based on age. On the contrary, that sort of underestimation was what made him so good at this job.
“This is Mark Hilty,” Danforth said, gesturing unnecessarily. As his arm moved, a stench of body odor combined with some underlying chemical smell that Jeth associated with public toilets struck his nose, gagging him. He held his breath and stepped to the right, away from Danforth. The man’s hygiene was a contributing factor in Jeth’s dislike of him.
Mark Hilty held out a hand and Jeth shook it.
“So, what have we got?” Jeth asked.
Hilty turned and walked to the back of the truck. It was a standard Wellforth Corporation anti-grav truck, wide and long and with an outer shell built like a tank. He keyed the code into the rear door lock and the ramp lowered, letting out a puff of cold air. Hilty stepped inside, where more than a dozen barrels containing the various wines, beers, and other alcohols Wellforth was famous for stood lined up on either side with a narrow walkway between them.
He shouted over his shoulder, “We need to move some of these out.”
Jeth peered up the ramp and watched as the man grabbed a dolly and then hoisted up one of the barrels nearest the front with it. He wheeled the barrel outside, pried off the lid with a tool from his belt, and then shoved it over, spewing champagne all over the ground.
“Got to make room for the decoys,” Hilty said.
Jeth nodded. Five decoy barrels waited in the cargo bay of the Debonair. Jeth and the others had loaded them before they’d left the spaceport. On the outside, the decoys looked identical to the barrels in the truck, but inside they were lined with a special material that would hide their true contents from the security scanners the truck would pass through on the way into the palace.
Human contents, Jeth remembered. The thought made him squirm. He, Celeste, Flynn, and Lizzie would have to squeeze inside those barrels, hiding out for however long it took to get through the checkpoint. Not long, he hoped, palming sweat off the back of his neck. He’d been planetside only a few minutes and already a part of him craved the cool, constant atmosphere of space. They were lucky that they’d brought an extra barrel just in case, although it had never crossed Jeth’s mind that he would need one to hide his sister inside.
“When you get back,” Hilty was saying, “we’ll swap your barrels out again so I can turn in the truck with the normal ones.”
“Okay.” Jeth checked his watch; they were right on schedule.
As Hilty headed up the ramp to retrieve the next barrel, Jeth turned toward the cargo entrance where the crew waited in the cooler air. “Let’s get to work.” He waved at the lot of them before stepping up onto the ramp into the truck.
“Hold on a second,” Danforth called to him. “Don’t you think you should sit this one out? You don’t want to get to the party all sweaty and reeking.”
You’re definitely the expert on stenches, Jeth thought. He bit his tongue to keep from saying it aloud. And here was another reason he despised Danforth so much—his knack for making Jeth feel stupid. He wasn’t, and no matter how uncertain Danforth made him, Jeth knew he was more than capable of leading this mission alone. He’d done it on dozens of jobs since Danforth had left the Shades.
Still, he’d learned a long time ago that failing to heed helpful input was a sign of incompetent leadership, so he swallowed his pride and reentered the air-conditioned cargo bay.
While the others helped unload the barrels, he double-checked the four bags of supplies they were bringing along. The first contained the electronic equipment, a master control hub and a comm unit, while the second held a flashlight, a couple of wrenches, and a handheld scanner. The third contained the explosives for Shady’s portion of the job, and the fourth held their usual cache of weapons, just in case.
“Hey, Liz,” Jeth called as she stepped into view from the back of the truck.
She walked up the ramp and came to a stop just inside the shade, wiping sweat from her brow. The heat and humidity had turned her already curly hair into a frizzy nest that no brush would ever see its way through unaided. “What’s up?”
“You know how to use this?” Jeth held up the Mirage 9mm he’d selected from the weapons cache. The safety was on and the clip detached, held in his other hand.
She wrinkled her nose. “Of course. Weapons study is part of my training for the Malleus Shades.”
Jeth had known it was, but her answer wasn’t good enough. “Prove it.” He held out the gun with one hand and the loaded clip with the other.
Lizzie eyed the gun warily. Jeth knew guns weren’t her favorite things. But if she was going to make it as one of the Shades, she’d have to get over it.
Sighing, Lizzie took the gun and clip from him, and then with surprising speed, she shoved the clip into place, flipped off the safety, and took aim. “Rock,” she said, calling her target.
A half second later, the loud report of gunfire vibrated Jeth’s ears, and he saw a hole appear in the surface of a giant rock lying a few meters to the left of the cargo bay. The rock was close and made for a large target, but she’d managed to hit it, even if the shot was far from center.
“That’ll have to do for now, I suppose,” Jeth said. “But you need to work on centering your aim.”
Lizzie made a face.
“I’m serious, Liz. Not all your targets will be big or standing still.”
“I’m tech ops, Jeth. How often will I really need to shoot something?”
Not someone but something. Jeth sighed at her naiveté. The beginnings of a lecture about how jobs were unpredictable and that you couldn’t count on anything formed in his mind, but he held back. There wasn’t time for it now.
“Often enough.” He took the Mirage from her, turning on the safety once more but leaving the clip in place. He returned it to the weapons bag, and then together he and Lizzie placed all the equipment in one of the barrels.
Once the decoy barrels were loaded on the truck, they were ready to leave. Jeth, Celeste, Lizzie, and Flynn filed into the cargo hold while Danforth and Shady took the front. They left the narrow door between the cab and cargo open, allowing those in back to see where they were going for as long as possible.
“Don’t be late getting back,” Hilty called through the opened driver’s window, his gaze fixed on Jeth. “I’ve got to get the truck turned in to headquarters by oh-six-hundred or it’s my ass.”
Jeth smirked. “We’ll be there yesterday.”
Hilty didn’t respond, but Jeth registered the doubt in his eyes. He decided to take it as a challenge.
Shady started the engine, and the truck lifted into the air, forcing Hilty to step back. The next moment they were on their way, zooming over the road carved through the forest. They soon passed out of the woods into farmland.
Row after row of silkwater plants flashed by, their stooped, rounded stalks unmistakable. The plant was indigenous to Grakkus and one of the exports responsible for the planet’s wealth. Silkwater fabric went for a premium, possession of it a universal status symbol. Hammer himself owned at least two suits made from it, each worth the price of an economy spaceship—or so Jeth had heard.
Finally, the city came into view, a sprawling mass of buildings set in chaotic array, as if the city builders had designed it on whim and chance rather than with any logical plan. Somewhere near the middle of the city, arching high above everything else, stood the Emperor’s Tower. The natives called it the axis mundi, the center of the universe, and Jeth could almost see why, given its impressive height and appearance. Inside the tower was the Heart of the Universe, the giant ruby they’d come to steal.
Jeth cleared his throat and faced the others, motioning to the barrels. “It’s time.”
Flynn let out a groan as he slid off the barrel he’d been sitting on and stood up. Jeth couldn’t blame him. The refrigeration in the back of the truck kept the air crisp, but Jeth didn’t know how much that was going to help once they were crammed inside the barrels.
Nevertheless, Flynn went first, fitting inside surprisingly well considering the bulky bio-suit. Celeste went next, and then Lizzie stepped up.
“You sure you’re up for this?” he asked, noting the lack of color in her face. Even her freckles seemed pale.
She swallowed and put on her brave face. It was one Jeth knew well from long-ago nights when they’d stayed up late telling ghost stories and their parents had finally come in and told them to head to bed. “Sure. It’s going to be fun.”
Jeth arched an eyebrow.
Lizzie scrunched up her nose. “Stop brothering me.”
Jeth pressed his lips together to hold in a chuckle. “Like that’ll ever happen.”
She rolled her eyes and then sank down beneath the barrel’s rim, her stubborn expression in place now. Jeth found comfort in it. She would be all right; she was his sister, brilliant and resourceful. He pulled the lid into place, sealing her in.
Finally, it was Jeth’s turn. He climbed inside the last barrel and then stared up at Danforth, who’d come into the back to put on the lid for him.
For the first time since Danforth’s unexpected arrival, Jeth noticed how awful he looked, worse than he’d ever seen him—and that was saying something given the way his brown hair had always hung like rags around his face, the grease so thick even a strong breeze wouldn’t ruffle it, or how his skin always looked patched and crumpled like an apple left out to rot in the sun. Now his thinness bordered on emaciation, his skin drawn and brittle over his skull. Red veins wove thick webs through the whites of his eyes. Jeth wondered what kind of work he’d been doing for Hammer since his time with the Shades had ended.
“Promise you’ll keep Lizzie in line?” Jeth said, a tremor of genuine fear sliding through his belly and down his thighs. Letting her stay might have been the most practical decision, but his big-brother side didn’t particularly care.
“Sure I will. She’ll be fine. It’ll be easy.”
Jeth nodded, reminding himself that Danforth had guided him safely through his first couple of jobs, with only a few exceptions that—if Jeth were willing to admit it—had mostly been his fault for not listening. Then he remembered how Lizzie was just like him. “Don’t trust her to do anything on her own. She likes to get creative.”
Danforth smiled. “Understood.”
Jeth nodded again, and was about to tell Danforth he was glad he was here when he noticed a thin membranous line of black liquid trickle out of Danforth’s left nostril.
Danforth wiped it away at once. “Shit, sorry about that. I’ve been getting these damn nosebleeds lately.”
“Why?” Jeth asked, his heartbeat quickening. It hadn’t looked like blood, at least not the normal, oxygenated kind. That black liquid looked like burner blood, one of the signs of Odyssey abuse. But that was impossible. How would Danforth have gotten his hands on the drug? Even Hammer, who had virtually no morals to speak of, refused to deal in Odyssey. Known by a slew of street names—Black, Flyboys, ZXMP—it was the most addictive drug in the galaxy.
“Hammer’s had me working a job on Gallant Prime for the past couple of months,” Danforth said, meeting Jeth’s gaze. “That’s one of those coal mining planets. The stuff gets everywhere. Dries you out. I’ve been getting these bleeds ever since I came back.”
“Okay.” The word choked Jeth’s throat, like icy air.
With an effort, he shook the feeling off. Worry for Lizzie was making him paranoid. One little flash of a dark liquid did not make Danforth a drug addict. He seemed coherent and functional, his old tech ops magician self. And if he had been stuck in a mine on Gallant Prime, that would explain the degradation in his appearance as well. Those who spent most of their time in the treated air of spaceships and ports often struggled with breathing the real thing.
Just do the job and get out, Jeth reminded himself. Play it safe. No tricks. No mischief. But the resolution didn’t make him feel any better as Danforth slid the lid into place, sealing Jeth in darkness.
CHAPTER 03
BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVED ON THE PALACE GROUNDS, Jeth had forgotten about his paranoia. The job demanded all his attention and focus. They had made it past the security checkpoints without problems, and Shady and Danforth had let the others out the moment they’d finished unloading the first round of barrels for the party.
Soon after, Celeste assumed her role as servant with remarkable ease, managing to get all the relays for the master control hub and comm into place. The role allowed her to come and go from the palace without passing through the metal detectors. All servants were supposed to have gone through a physical security check at the gate.
Once the unit was up and running, Danforth and Lizzie hacked into the palace’s security system, Lizzie radiating eagerness like some kind of electrical current. Flynn’s and Shady’s parts would come later.
Now it was Jeth’s turn to get into place. He approached the long flight of wide marble steps that led up to the massive pavilion lining the front of the emperor’s palace. A row of white pillars, carved in the likenesses of warrior men and women wearing fitted helmets and armor, held up the pavilion’s roof like priests in a religious ritual. The main doors to the palace stood open, with lines of armed sentries sporting the red uniform of the emperor’s personal guard flanking both sides of the doors.
At the sight of them, Jeth reached up and scratched behind his ear, surreptitiously pressing the communicator patch affixed to his skin. “Heading in. Turning you off,” he whispered.
“Gotcha, Longshot,” Lizzie’s voice echoed inside his ear a second later. The sound of it made him stumble in shock.
“What are you doing on the line?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it covered. Just call me Little Hawk.”
Jeth grimaced. His little sister, first-time criminal.
Shoving the thought away before one of the guards noticed the grim look on his face, Jeth pressed the patch again, holding it long enough to terminate the connection completely.
He willed a confident smile as he stepped into the line for the security check. When he reached the front, he slid his counterfeit invitation out of his back pocket and handed it to a gray-haired man. The man’s bored expression remained in place as he slid the invitation through the scanner. The red light on the scanner turned green at once with an audible beep.
“ID please,” the man said, still not looking up. Jeth suspected he might start yawning any second.
Jeth considered cracking a joke, but held back, his new resolution to play it safe echoing in his head. He pressed his right thumb to the reader and its light switched from red to green in moments.
“Enjoy your stay,” the gray-haired man said, handing the invitation back.
“Oh, I plan to,” Jeth said, allowing himself a moment’s indulgence of
the old cocky attitude. He’d learned early that confidence could take you through any number of sticky situations. He slid the invitation back into his pocket for safekeeping.
He passed through the main doors without hesitating, even though he was well aware that full body scanners had been attached to the doorframes to check his person for metal or anything else suspicious. The only things Jeth had to worry about were the contact lens in his right eye and the communicator patch. But the former was too small to show up on a scan, and with the latter powered off, there was no chance of it registering.
Jeth waited until he entered the grand ballroom at the end of the long main hallway to power the communicator back on. The music, something fast with heavy bass, was loud enough to make the insides of his ears numb. So loud that he couldn’t actually hear himself speak as he said into the comm, “Entry achieved.”
“Good job, Longshot,” Lizzie said. “You’ve got fifty-three minutes until your rendezvous with Tailspin.”
“Roger.” This time he left the connection open.
He slowly swept his gaze over the room, taking in the scene. Hundreds of people filled the center of the dance floor, their bodies writhing and bouncing in and out of rhythm with the music. More people mingled about the buffet tables set around the edges of the room and covered with decadent foods. Jeth was pleased to see that most of the boys his age sported the same kind of ridiculous getup as he did.
The realization bolstered his confidence, and he strode forward, swiping a glass of champagne from a passing server. He took a slow, easy drink. He had to be careful not to overdo it, but a drink was a good prop to help him blend in.
He made his way through the crowd, eying the spots in the room relevant to the plan. There was the eastern wall where he would meet Celeste. Across from it was the hallway that led out onto the terrace. His ultimate destination lay through the second door on the left down that hallway.
Proxy: An Avalon Novella Page 2
